Chapter 2

  Azul

  Azul walked away from the note he’d planted in Yuu’s desk feeling reasonably confident his troubles would be put to rest by the end of the day. The invitation he’d received that morning through the Octavinelle mirror—from a grumpy delivery merman far past retirement age—had brought with it a bludgeoning blow to his schedule, the ripples of which he would be dealing with for weeks. Had it been any other event, he would have sent a perfunctory gift and polite refusal right back with the delivery merman. As it was, there were… complications.

  “Floyd, will you please get the new hires to stop hanging personal art in the lobby. This is getting… out of hand,” Azul grit through his teeth when he returned to the lounge.

  The freshman, it appeared, thought it was funny to post pictures of the lounge food and drinks from around campus. On the west wall, a Mimosa was taking a nap with a gardening textbook. On the back of the counter, several croquettes were playing broom hockey, and a bowl of soup was out with friends. Azul drew the line, however, at a blue cocktail posed on a black leather couch in what was undoubtedly someone’s bedroom, getting leered at by a cocktail stirrer.

  “Nah, it’s funny.” Floyd shrugged, already wandering away.

  Azul glared at his retreating back, and caught a glimpse of several more photos of the same ilk peeking from his back pocket.

  “Traitor,” he muttered. “Jade? Jade. Please help me.”

  But Jade, tying his uniform apron strings, only shook his head.

  “I don’t think so, Boss. Mostro customer approval is up by ten percent since we started this little advert.”

  Azul’s eyes narrowed. “We?”

  Jade ignored him.

  “There’s a magicam page dedicated just to the new shots. Even Schoenheit’s laughed at a few. You wouldn’t believe the free publicity.”

  “This is not a gag establishment,” Azul argued, though he could already feel in his magically-created toes that this was a losing argument. “There is free publicity, and then there is the right kind of publicity.”

  Jade bent down to look him in the face, and Azul, through his scowl, was tempted to shove him away.

  “In a year from now this ‘gag’ will have been forgotten, but the profit margin won’t. However… you already know that, Boss. So. Whose eyes are on the lounge right now that you wouldn’t want seeing something like this?”

  Azul resisted the temptation to roll his eyes, opting to glare instead. “There is, indeed.”

  Azul produced the thick merfolk-made invitation from his briefcase, along with the note that had followed.

  Jade read the invitation and raised a brow. “Familiar names, but hardly cause for concern.”

  “Now read the other,” Azul instructed.

  Skeptical, Jade opened the second parchment, also mer-folk-made, though far less ostentatious.

  His eyes widened as he read, until finally, when he saw the signature at the bottom, his jaw opened, and he swallowed hard. Azul plucked the parchment from Jade’s fingers the moment he’d finished.

  “So…” Jade, never one to stutter, stuttered. “So, you—you won’t be with us this weekend, then.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Indeed. We’ll be dealing with some complication. And while I do enjoy the idea of free publicity, perhaps you could arrange for the magicam site to…disappear until then.”

  “Complications,” Jade repeated dumbly. “Yes…yes, I’ll call in a favor from Ignihyde…”

  “And I’ll have to make arrangements not to be here this weekend. Much as I hate to say, with the new hires as they are, we may have to close up shop those two days.”

  Jade blinked. “Those are our most profitable days. You’re sure you want to do that? You’re sure this is…” He tapped the note in Azul’s hands. “This is real?”

  “Oh, it is real. I’d know mother’s signature anywhere. Even if someone did fake it, that is definitely her ink.”

  “I thought something smelled familiar,” Jade said, wrinkling his nose. “Ah, Nerissa… do give her our regards. And then, if you please, talk to her about us as little as possible.”

  Azul gave a disdainful snort. “Of course. I’m not the pushover with her that I used to be.”

  “The rest of the ocean seems to be,” Jade rebuffed.

  “I am not the rest of the ocean,” Azul promised, hoping that he was right. “Now, I’m headed to the office. I’ll need to redo this month’s schedule if we’re going to make quota.”

  He made for the upper stairway, Jade keeping stride with him easily. Nerissa Ashengrotto was the sort of woman one only associated with out of naivete, or hubris, or sheer desperation. She ran The Blue Pearl, a restaurant on the Atlantican border famous kingdom-wide for gourmet seafood, air-bubble dining, and a potion bar that the customers raved was nothing short of miraculous. However, though popular, Nerissa’s restaurant was similar to Azul’s in that it was merely a front for her more dubious business.

  Nerissa Ashengrotto, unlike Azul, was willing to deal in prices far steeper than Azul or the Leech brothers were comfortable with. Nerissa was rumored to accept years off of mer-folk’s lives in exchange for cures, beauty, and rare ingredients. In other cases, she took actual body parts—fins, tails, an eye or two—from those she really hated. Azul and Jade had once made the mistake of swimming into her trophy room one afternoon out of curiosity. The memory still haunted both boys. Though Floyd had later begged to know what was in there, Azul had added his own protection charms on the door, and neither he, nor Jade had ever let him see.

  The only true competitors for the magic that Nerissa peddled, were the Banejaw family—a business with such a thorough chokehold on the ocean’s rarest potions ingredients, that even simple gardeners usually had a contract or two with them. They were also family, on his father’s side—yet another reason that relations were tense. Varun Banejaw was Azul’s first cousin, and if his mother’s note was to be believed, he had just been named heir to the Banejaw family. This wedding was to be the first in a very rare set of opportunities in repairing their estrangement—a wise move if Azul was to be dealing with him the rest of his life.

  Azul could attend a wedding. He could be a perfect guest. He could even push through the awkwardness that one’s mother having eaten a member of a prestigious family would inevitably bring to conversation.

  However, he was doubtful of one thing: his mother had demanded he bring an escort—a date—to the event, on pain of pain.

  “So…” Jade snickered behind a log book once they’d situated themselves behind the new schedule. “How do you plan on meeting Nerissa’s…other request? Not many mermaids will go out with you since Perse got munched.”

  “Those were scurrilous rumors spread by crabs,” Azul gritted darkly. “Perse Banejaw chose a life on land, and deserted Atlantica. The Ashengrotto family is cecaelian, not octopus. We don’t…”

  “Eat your mates?” Jade teased, ducking in time to dodge the ink bottle Azul threw at his head.

  “Shut it.”

  “Bet Floyd would dress the part if you asked nicely,” Jade continued with faux-seriousness. “Buy him a nice wig, promise him free drinks for life—”

  Azul lobbed a pen at him next, which Jade also managed to neatly dodge.

  “So messy, Azul,” Jade sighed. “Think of the carpet.”

  “We have cleaning magic, you trout,” Azul snapped. “And we both know Floyd would make a terrible escort. How many mermaids can eat half a wedding cake before realizing it’s rude?”

  “You do have a point.”

  “You could do it,” Azul remarked half-heartedly.

  “I don’t have the complexion,” Jade dismissed. “You could always ask one of the Pomfiore puffs. Plenty of them owe you favors.”

  “You and I both know Mother will see through any disguise they have—and I don’t like the idea of the rumors that sort of favor would cause on campus, either.”

  Jade shrugged. “Desperate times?”

  “Not that desperate,” Azul huffed, straightening the papers in front of him. “I’ll have you know, I already have a contingency plan in place.”

  NRC’s selection of women was nearly 70-30, females having fled the campus during the death-toll rise of 1368. The number that he knew outside of his own dormitory was negligible, and nearly all of them were in Savannaclaw, simply because they were too tough to be scared off. There was one, however, that met all of the potential standards—not so ravenous that she would make a scene, not terrified of new situations, even though the occasion often called for it, and most importantly, 100% female, as per his mother’s request.

  “Oh, this should be entertaining,” Jade said, putting his finished paperwork on Azul’s desk. “When was the last time you spoke to a girl?”

  “I sold thirty chocolate carousels to a group of them just last week,” Azul snipped.

  “Oh, that is right,” Jade rolled his eyes. “Well, just sell this event to her like you’re selling sweets, and we might even turn a profit! Whole evening with one of them? I bet you’ll have her in debt for a year.”

  “I am capable of normal conversation, I’ll have you know.”

  “Azul, you’re half fish, and you’re the driest piece of toast I’ve ever met.”

  “I am not dry. I am professional.”

  “Ugh, it’s like talking to a vending machine!” Floyd mock groaned.

  “I am not—”

  “Would you like the fruity soda? It’s thirty percent off!”

  “Get. Out.”

  “Oh, he says it just like a card-reader!”

  “Jade,” Azul hissed in warning.

  Jade sighed. “Well, at least you say my name with feeling. Perhaps there’s hope for you, yet!”

  Azul reached around his desk for something else to throw, but apart from the papers, he was out of ammunition.

  “I’m off, then!” Jade announced cheerily. “Some of us have important things to do. Homework. Cooking. Meeting with friends and having normal conversations with women.”

  “I should fire you,” but Azul’s words were wasted on the heels of Jade’s spats, as he disappeared through the door.

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